5. That is nonsense, which completely fails to understand the nature of US bonds.

It's the kind of abstract conspiracy theorism you might expect from the Ron Paul crowd: that because there's not a giant pile of money sitting in a vault, therefore the Social Security Trust Fund isn't real. Except, it is, and it contains $2.6 trillion dollars worth of US treasury bonds; the same kind which the US government is legally bound to honor. It's not like taking $50 out of a box and saying "don't worry, we'll pay it back." Krauthammer is, as usual, completely full of shit, and using said fullness of shit to fearmonger. The threat to Social Security in the debt deal was the prospect of forcing the US to default on it's debt, which would have tanked the price of US bonds, which are currently and have been for decades a no-risk investment.